‘Gamification’ of consumer apps like Foursquare and Get Glue, through points, badges, mayorships has become a big thing over the past 18 months. Now US startup IActionable wants to bring game mechanics to the enterprise market too, with an app for leading cloud-based business platform Salesforce.com.
Engage is built to integrate with Salesforce accounts, adding points, challenges, achievements and leaderboards to working culture. IActionable says that its platform can: be used to increase productivity; be used as a training tool, helping to improve Salesforce adoption amongst new staff by helping them get used to the platform and encouraging old hands to use it to its full potential; help improve performance monitoring, and spur on healthy competition between employees.
Applying game mechanics to work is nothing new – sales teams in businesses around the world have long operated leaderboards and rewards schemes to motivate staff, but applying videogame-style achievements to a business environment is likely to be met with a mixed reception – is it really appropriate? Opinions will vary, but Salesforce.com’s ‘chief scientist’ JP Rangaswami recently spoke about how gamification was the future of the motivation and performance management in the workplace, so expect to see more of this kind of thing in the future. It remains to be seen exactly how many businesses will adopt such an approach.
The video below explains Engage in more detail.
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